


Stronger than Water

by OtherPaths



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, Nitric Acid, On The Barricade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:35:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1496857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherPaths/pseuds/OtherPaths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desperate men will use any weapon they have.  Combeferre is unable to deny it to them</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stronger than Water

**Author's Note:**

> Contains a relatively graphic dialogue description of the effects of nitric acid

In the light of the single candle Combeferre examined the basket. It held fifteen bottles, the labels filled out in a cramped hand in thin pencil. 

“Aqua fortis,” he said at last.

“Vitriol, the man who brought them told me,” Enjolras said, “He’s dead now.” 

“Vitriol which has been treated,” said Combeferre. “Nitric acid.”

“What is the effect on flesh?”

“I have seen it. Aqua fortis has use in some crafts, sometimes there are accidents. It rots the flesh, turns it yellow and then eats it away. It can even rot the bone. It should be kept away from the eyes above all. The fumes burn the lungs. Breathing in too much can kill. It causes hideous pain.” Even in the flickering light he could see Enjolras was pale, but the line of his mouth was hard. “You mean to use it,” Combeferre finished.

“A last resort.” Enjolras kept his eyes on the bottles. “If I were to tell the men, would they agree?”

Combeferre thought. “Yes,” he said. “Perhaps not now, perhaps not all of them. But if it comes to to it, yes, men in the last resort will use anything for just a few more moments of life.”

“I think so too. It may not come to that, but if it does I will not deny these men any means of defence there is to hand. They have come willing to give their lives, those lives are ours to guard as best we can.”

“There’s no need to tell them,” said Combeferre, “at least not yet. The weight of such a choice would lie heavy on their hearts. I would spare them that.”

Enjolras nodded. “I am sorry you have not been spared it.”

Combeferre had known, they both had known, that such choices might have to be made, yet even in the dimness he could see the weight in his friend’s face, just as he felt it in his soul. 

They came up the stairs together. “It's the old stock of Father Hucheloup, who began business as a grocer,” Combeferre told those assembled in the lower room as he stowed the basket beneath the table on which the old man’s body had been laid. 

“It must be real wine,” Bossuet commented, and Combeferre was unsure if Bossuet had recognised the bottles or was deceived with the rest. He did not ask.

Later much later, after the men had passed their own death sentence, after a child’s corpse had been laid beside the old man’s, after the last flares of hope had died, Enjolras ordered the fifteen bottles carried to the upper room. 

Combeferre knew he could protest. He could smash the bottles himself, now, before they could be used. If he said nothing, did nothing, the shadow of the choice to use them would lie on him as heavily as on Enjolras. There were choices no man should have to make, but the times they lived in forced the choices. Here the choice was either to use a terrible weapon, or to deny men willing to selflessly lay down their lives for a people who closed their doors against them every scrap of protection, every sherd that could make their deaths weigh in the scales of history.

We will share your fate, Combeferre had said, after Enjolras killed Le Cabuc, but although he had accepted the need for Le Cabuc’s killing he felt he had not truly shared Enjolras’ fate until now. The good must be innocent, he had said many times, but if this was another sacrifice needed for the future he would make it. 

As the men assembled on the ground floor he reached for Enjolras’ hand and squeezed it hard.

**Author's Note:**

> “They had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles hermetically sealed. Enjolras and Combeferre examined them. Combeferre when he came up again said:--"It's the old stock of Father Hucheloup, who began business as a grocer."--"It must be real wine," observed Bossuet…”
> 
> These are the bottles which Enjolras later has carried to the first floor for use in the last defence, and which hold nitric acid. Combeferre must have known what was really in those bottles, but he doesn't protest against the decision to use them. 
> 
> I’m not sure if the term nitric acid was used at this time, but decided that would be a relatively small anachronism.


End file.
